Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate today on the second group of amendments to Bill C-26.
There has been quite a debate here about government's role in the specialty crops area. I think the phrase that is hated most of all on the prairies is “I am from the federal government and I am here to help you”. That is when farmers and producers head for cover in the back 40. They know they may have a well-intentioned government out there ready to provide a program but quite often it goes off the rails in the process. Some of my colleagues have already talked about that today.
The issue here really is a matter of whether this is a voluntary check-off or one that is a negative option billing and has to be applied for. It seems that government has not learned a lesson from the cable television industry issue that raised so much furore a couple of years ago. It is okay to back off there but when it comes to farmers, mother government knows best. It sounds like something we used to hear out of Russia in the height of the central planning days. It certainly did not work there and I do not see how it is going to work here.
The issue itself of whether there should be insurance for these producers of specialty crops is not a bad one but it is one which should be decided by the producers themselves. As one of my colleagues said earlier, if we take half a per cent here and one per cent there, pretty soon it adds up to something big. Farmers are under a lot of stress already and have difficulty competing. They want to decide for themselves whether they want to take insurance.
On my own home farm in Alberta we do not choose to take hail insurance. It is an option we have. It is a management tool. It is available. That is the way it should be with regard to the specialty crops issue. It should be available. If farmers want it, they will support it. If enough of them support it, it is going to be a viable option. If they do not, or if only 20% support it, maybe it is not going to be viable and maybe it is something that really is not needed. It seems to me that farmers should have that choice.
Choice is not something the government seems to offer when it comes to farmers. On the Canadian Wheat Board debate, if there was a choice offered, producers would vote with their product. They would support whatever system worked best for them. Maybe two systems could work side by side, the Canadian Wheat Board working side by side with the free market option. Maybe it could work that way and I think it probably would. Surely the choice should be left up to the producers. It is in every other aspect of Canadian life. It seems to me that is what should be done here as well.
It bothers me that the government has chosen to take a negative approach, that farmers have to pay it unless they want it back. The government seems to think that farmers will forget about it and it will sort of chew away and that money will be added to the pool.
If this was voluntary and farmers decided not to take it, what is the issue? The farmers would no longer be eligible for that insurance. Farmers would know that, in the same way they know that if they do not choose to take crop insurance they are not eligible to collect. If they do not choose to take hail insurance, they are not eligible to collect hail insurance. It would be the same here. It is a choice.
It seems that the government has a condescending view of farmers, that they are people who cannot run their own lives and do not know how to operate a business. I have a big surprise for the Liberal government. Farmers know full well what they are doing. They are running operations which in many cases are in the millions of dollars. They make choices every day. They make choices on what kind of fertilizer to put on, what kind of seed, what is the best kind. They access information through the Internet on the best varieties. These people are intelligent. Surely they can decide whether they want an insurance program for specialty crops.
In the Peace River country a lot of people are growing peas, a speciality crop. It is a management tool that surely should be available to them but let them make the decision. Why should they have to wait a year to get their money back if they do not want to participate in the project? They would not be covered for the insurance if they decided to get their money back at the end of the year. The pool would have that money for a full year. It is a bureaucratic set-up. It takes time to get it back and for the check-off to take place. Surely the better system would be to have it voluntary so that they would say this is a management tool they want and need in their business.
Another issue is the issue of having some responsibility for farmers who do not want to take that insurance. They have a choice in to whom they sell product. They have a choice in the same way that if I produced a book I could sell the book. If I produced a pen I could sell it to somebody. If I thought the person was a poor credit risk, that he or she would go broke and not pay me, I would want to do some investigative research to know it was a stable company when I hauled my product there.
Why do we need government interfering in all that process? Could it not just be a process for those people who choose a voluntary process? Could it not just be a process that says “I will sell my peas off my farm to that company, but before doing that I want to know that when I get a cheque it will not be NSF, that the company is good for it. I have a choice of whether or not I take insurance. If I decide I do not want that 2% cost to me I will do my own research and find out whether or not it is a viable company?”
I suggest that 98% of the commerce that goes on in Canada out of a $750 billion gross domestic product takes place in that manner. Government does not interfere in all areas of business. When we buy a car there is no insurance that says the company will to produce it. It is a simple business transaction. It seems to me the same should apply here.
Those are my comments. I know a lot of people in my riding of Peace River would choose not to participate if it were voluntary. There are those who would choose to participate. I guess it would be a matter of whether there were enough people involved in the process to make it into an economic feasible insurance program. If there are not enough people who want to participate maybe it should not be in place to begin with.